Hit-and-runs leave questions

Nearly a dozen people have been killed or seriously injured in Orange County in a rash of hit-and-run accidents that the mother of one victim calls "irresponsible."

Two men were killed and a woman in a wheelchair was injured in the past two days, the latest victims of bloody spate of accidents since the start of November:

A 7-year-old girl, hit and dragged. A 3-year-old girl, run over by a shooting suspect. Three teenage boys, thrown onto the hood of a car that, like the others, fled rather than stayed at the scene.

Police said that despite the rash of high-profile cases recently, they have not seen an overall increase in hit-and-run accidents involving pedestrians. Statistics kept by the state, in fact, show that the number of people hurt or killed in hit-and-run crashes here had fallen in recent years.

"Our goal is to catch them," Anaheim police Sgt. Bob Dunn said of drivers who hit the gas rather than the brake after an accident. "Sometimes we do and, unfortunately, sometimes we do not. Those drivers know what they did, and they'll have to live with that for the rest of their lives."

The most recent series of hit-and-run accidents started Monday afternoon in Laguna Hills, where a 56-year-old woman in a wheelchair was hit. Witnesses said the driver, described only as a man, stopped briefly and then drove away. The woman's legs were broken.

Several hours later, a dark sedan slammed into a man walking in a crosswalk across an Anaheim freeway ramp, killing him, then fled. Then, early Tuesday morning, a passerby discovered the body of Newton Fukushima, 43, lying in an Anaheim street; police were treating his death as a hit-and-run as well.

At least 16 accidents on Orange County roadways have hurt or killed pedestrians or bicyclists since the start of November, a review of Register news archives shows. The driver stayed in half those cases; the driver fled in the other half.

Statistics kept by the state's Office of Traffic Safety show that 912 people were killed or injured in hit-and-run accidents in Orange County in 2010, the most recent full year available. That number had been falling steadily at least since 2006, when 1,420 people here were hurt or killed here by drivers who fled.

Melitza Jimenez prays to God for just one, her daughter Evelyn. Earlier this month, the 7-year-old girl darted into a Santa Ana street and was hit and dragged by a dark SUV. The driver's crime was fleeing the scene afterward.

Evelyn was treated for head injuries, released from the hospital then rushed back with high fevers and ear infections. Melitza Jimenez spends her days making hospital trips and arranging car rides to school for her other children.

"It was horrible for me," she said. She described the driver who fled as "irresponsible" and said those who hit and run "don't think of other people."

Police said the first hours and days after a hit-and-run accident are critical in tracking down a driver. They count on witnesses to provide descriptions and details; they rush to get surveillance tape from nearby buildings, before it gets taped over. Earlier this year, the California Highway Patrol used DNA from the front end of a car to link it to a fatal hit-and-run accident that killed a 3-year-old girl.

Under state law, a hit-and-run conviction can send a driver to state prison for up to four years if the victim was seriously hurt or killed. A drunken driver who flees from a crash can get up to five years in addition to any other prison term.

Why do they run? A 1941 psychiatry paper theorized that hit-and-run drivers suffer a mental malfunction that makes "certain types of unstable and otherwise psychopathic people" flee from an accident.

A more recent report, published last year by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, offered another answer. It found that unlicensed drivers were nearly 10 times more likely to flee an accident as those with valid licenses. Drivers with suspended or revoked licenses were about eight times more likely to run, and those with expired or canceled licenses were about 6.5 times more likely to flee.

For Orange County, the recent toll of hit-and-run drivers includes 3-year-old Karla Yulie Burgon, who was holding hands with a cousin and leaving an Anaheim celebration when she was hit. Family members said she is recovering from head injuries; police suspect that the driver who hit her and was later arrested had just carried out a drive-by shooting.

A woman crossing a Garden Grove street against a red light was hit and killed by a taxi earlier this month; it fled. So did the car that hit and seriously injured three teenagers walking near a Santa Ana park. And the driver of the Toyota Rav4 that hit and killed a 24-year-old man in Westminster last month later turned himself in and was held on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and vehicular manslaughter, police said.

Investigators are trying to piece together the most recent hit-and-run accidents. The California Highway Patrol is investigating the death of the pedestrian on the southbound Imperial Highway onramp to the westbound 91 and asked that anyone with information call 714-567-6000.

Anaheim police are investigating the death of the man found on Lincoln Avenue near Anaheim Boulevard. They asked that anyone with information call 714-765-1834.